Gov. Healey Signs MA $56 Billion Fiscal 2024 Budget

BOSTON, MA — More than a month after the end of the last fiscal year, the fiscal 2024 Massachusetts state budget is officially in place.

Gov. Maura Healey signed the document Wednesday morning, authorizing $56 billion in spending to run state government over the next 11 months, plus funding for local school districts and hundreds of projects in cities and towns across the state.

The budget includes a number of new initiatives championed by Healey and members of the state House and Senate: a mandate that local districts provide cost-free meals for all students; making community colleges free; ending charges for prison inmates to make calls; and a spending plan for the Fair Share approved in 2022.

The budget also includes $6.6 billion for Chapter 70 aid, the main state funding source for local school districts in Massachusetts. That's about $600 million higher than the previous fiscal year. The boost in funding is part of the ongoing fulfillment of the Student Opportunity Act, which updated the Chapter 70 funding formula.

Following Healey's declaration of a state of emergency over the state shelter system on Tuesday, the budget includes $324 million for the Emergency Assistance Family Shelter program — nearly 50 percent higher than in fiscal 2023.

The Fair Share tax has created about $1 billion in new revenue. About $524 million of that will go toward education including the new free-lunch mandate, pre-kindergarten and tuition-free community colleges. The remaining nearly $480 million will go to transportation initiatives including preserving highway and bridge infrastructure, rural transit and over $200 million for the MBTA. One MBTA initiative funded in the budget is means-tested fares — a discount program for riders earning way below the federal poverty level.

The fiscal 2024 budget is about 7 percent higher than fiscal 2023, which was former governor Charlie Baker's last budget. The 2024 budget was supposed to be done by the end of the 2023 fiscal year on June 30. It only emerged from a joint House and Senate conference committee on July 30.